Philosophy and the Human Condition An Anthology

Philosophy and the Human Condition: An Anthology brings together a rich collection of historically arranged readings on the crucial philosophical problems related to the human condition and human nature. Its contents are drawn from a wide range of sources, including the traditional works of Western philosophers from Plato to the present day; relevant extracts from religious texts; and contributions by women, traditions outside of the western philosophical canon, and other disciplines. Each reading selection is accompanied by an introduction. An extended introduction to philosophy at the beginning of the text addresses each of six principal issues that will be prominent in the reading selections drawn from the history of philosophy--the relation of mind and body; personal immortality; freedom of the will; the question of whether humans are naturally benevolent or naturally brutal; the nature and possibility of human happiness; and philosophical issues relating to race and gender--making the text an ideal all-in-one resource for introductory courses in philosophy.

Brian R. Clack is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego. He is the author of Love, Drugs, Art, Religion: The Pains and Consolations of Existence (2014) and the coauthor of The Philosophy of Religion: A Critical Introduction, Second Edition (2008).

Tyler Hower is Instructor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of San Diego, where he has taught since 2003.

INTRODUCTION: PHILOSOPHIZING ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION
PART ONE: RELIGIOUS SCRIPTURES
1. The Hebrew Bible
2. The Upanishads
3. Confucian Sources
4. Buddhist Scriptures
5. The Bhagavad Gita
6. The New Testament
7. The Qur'an
PART TWO: CLASSICAL SOURCES
8. Plato
9. Aristotle
10. Epicurus
11. Lucretius
12. Seneca
13. Martial
14. Plutarch
15. Epictetus
16. Plotinus
PART THREE: MEDIEVAL TEXTS
17. Augustine
18. Boethius
19. Maimonides
20. Thomas Aquinas
PART FOUR: RENAISSANCE AND MODERN WORKS
21. Michel de Montaigne
22. William Shakespeare
23. Thomas Hobbes
24. René Descartes
25. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes
26. Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld
27. Blaise Pascal
28. John Locke
29. Benedict de Spinoza
30. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
31. Alexander Pope
32. Voltaire
33. Emilie Du Châtelet
34. Samuel Johnson
35. Julien Offray de la Mettrie
36. Thomas Reid
37. David Hume
38. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
39. Adam Smith
40. Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach
41. Immanuel Kant
42. Edmund Burke
PART FIVE: LATE MODERN WRITINGS
43. William Paley
44. Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet
45. Jeremy Bentham
46. Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace
47. Joseph de Maistre
48. Mary Wollstonecraft
49. Thomas Malthus
50. Arthur Schopenhauer
51. Giacomo Leopardi
52. John Stuart Mill
53. John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle
54. Charles Darwin
55. Frederick Douglass
56. Karl Marx
57. Friedrich Nietzsche
PART SIX: TWENTIETH-CENTURY AND CONTEMPORARY VOICES
58. Sigmund Freud
59. W. E. B. Du Bois
60. Ludwig Wittgentein
61. Martin Heidegger
62. H. H. Price
63. Gilbert Ryle
64. Jean-Paul Sartre
65. Hannah Arendt
66. Simone de Beauvoir
67. Albert Camus
68. P. F. Strawson
69. John Hick
70. Bernard Williams
71. Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick
72. Robert Nozick
73. Genevieve Lloyd
74. David Lewis
75. Paul Churchland
76. Patricia Smith Churchland
77. John Gray
78. Patricia Hill Collins
79. Grace Jantzen
80. Charles W. Mills